‘Italy’ Category

Thomas Mann wrote in his 1939 essay Brother Hitler: And then he — who had learned nothing, and in his dreamy, obstinate arrogance never would learn anything; who had neither technical nor physical discipline, could not sit a horse, or drive a car, or fly a plane, or do aught that men do, even to … keep reading

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The sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy was born in 1866 in Intra, by Lago Maggiore in the north of Italy, to Ada Winans, an American pianist and singer, and Petr (Pyotr) Petrovich Trubetskoy, a Russian diplomat of aristocratic lineage. Paolo grew up in Italy and spoke little Russian but lived and worked in Russia for almost ten … keep reading

Both the headline editors at The New York Times and Steve Bannon have made the dubious claim that Julius Evola influenced Italian fascism. I have tried to explain why the idea that Evola had a considerable impact on either Mussolini or his senior ideologues is probably wrong, even though the baron’s writings might have impressed … keep reading

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Wednesday’s predictable but nevertheless bizarre re-conviction of Navalny and Ofitserov makes one wonder how the court managed the seemingly insurmountable barriers such as the absence of the corpus delicti and the ECHR’s ruling. It’s especially puzzling if, as Navalny has observed, at least some of the ruling was pasted straight from the 2013 original, complete with the … keep reading

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…by voting down proposed changes to that status quo. Italy’s system of government needs to be reformed and everybody seems to know that, within and without the country. Instead of doing something to that end, the referendum turned out a vote of confidence in the government, the EU, and the euro. When Berlusconi tried to … keep reading

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Professor Jan-Werner Müller from Princeton claims in the London Review of Books: But the peculiarity of Trump is that he seems the equivalent of Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi merged into one person. I don’t think he is, but Müller’s view is an enormous improvement on the Trump as Berlusconi trope. If one is keen on … keep reading

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Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist, comes across as sensible and well-informed, judging by this 2014 speech. Unfortunately, he is short on new solutions, to say nothing of a new worldview, but that would take a genius. At the moment, I’m more interested in the small things, such as this: …when you really look at some of the underpinnings of … keep reading

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Erdoğan’s ongoing purge of the judiciary is unsurprising: apparently, an influential group of appellate judges was one of the few barriers left on his march to absolute power – although the magistrates’ motives may have little to do with the rule of law. During his years as an active politician, Berlusconi was hounded by the so-called … keep reading

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LanguageHat is wondering, “why would the Iliad be taken as a measuring-rod for Italian”? Namely, in Elena Ferrante’s first Neapolitan novel, My Brilliant Friend, A teacher is said to speak “Italian that slightly resembled that of the Iliad,” and since the Iliad is not in Italian, I was puzzled. My guess is that there must … keep reading

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The indirect verbal brush between Donald Trump and judge Gonzalo Curiel has given me a slight pretext to quote from Perry Anderson’s 2002 article once again. Very slight indeed, because the US justice system is not nearly as politicized as Italy’s, even if it eventually turns out (perhaps years later) that judge Curiel was, after all, motivated … keep reading